Virginia state Del. Joe Morrissey had a rough end to 2014: he was sentenced to six months in jail in December on a misdemeanor conviction related to a sexual relationship he allegedly had with his underage former receptionist.

A former staffer with Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) is suing the congressman's office over an alleged hostile work environment and sexual harassment, including that the congressman communicated he was having "wet dreams" about the staffer and insinuated that she had semen on her skirt.

Uber and the traditional taxi industry have been at each other's throats since the upstart came onto the scene in 2010, but the feud has escalated to a whole new level with vicious campaigns demonizing each other that feature allegations that drivers have sexually assaulted their passengers.

Who's Driving You, the anti-Uber initiative founded earlier this year by the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association, is paying to promote a tweet that reads: "A passenger was sexually assaulted by an uberX driver. Listen to this 911 call." It then links to a YouTube video.

Barely a year removed from the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York faced a crossroads. Congress had set its sights on reform. The biggest banks in the nation had shown that their failure could threaten the entire financial system. Lawmakers wanted new safeguards.

The Federal Reserve, and, by dint of its location off Wall Street, the New York Fed, was the logical choice to head the effort. Except it had failed miserably in catching the meltdown.

New York Fed President William Dudley had to answer two questions quickly: Why had his institution blown it, and how could it do better? So he called in an outsider, a Columbia University finance professor named David Beim, and granted him unlimited access to investigate. In exchange, the results would remain secret.

Earlier this month an outfit called "Wisconsin Poll Watcher Militia" claimed on its Facebook page that it planned to show up at polling places this November — while armed — and intimidate Democratic voters who had signed the petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker back in 2012. Media outlets, including TPM, picked up on the claims, and a local prosecutor reportedly began looking into the matter. But there are now claims that the whole thing was a hoax, leaving a murky picture of cautious election officials, skeptical observers, and weird Internet subcultures.

A Sept. 18 post on Politicus USA captured screenshots of a Facebook page titled "Wisconsin Poll Watcher Militia." The group said that members planned to show up at polling locations armed and ready to target Democrats in the "worst areas" of a few cities in southeastern Wisconsin who had signed Walker's recall petition or had outstanding warrants. They would follow those people from the polls and report them to the police. TPM picked up local newspaper reports on the Facebook group on Monday.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and his office stymied investigations into political allies and associates being undertaken by an independent commission that Cuomo created to stop public corruption, the New York Times reported on Wednesday after a three-month investigation by the newspaper.

The most obvious interference, according to the Times, came when the commission sent a subpoena to Buying Time, a media company through which Cuomo had spent $20 million on ads since 2002. The commission was looking into the company's relationship with the New York Democratic Party, and it did not know of the firm's ties to Cuomo when it issued the subpoena.

A top Cuomo aide, Lawrence Schwartz, quickly scuttled the order. "This is wrong," he told a commission chairman, according to the Times. "Pull it back."

The episode was, according to the newspaper's investigation, part of a broader pattern of behavior by the governor's office. Cuomo disbanded the commission a full eight months before it was supposed to finish its work, claiming a legislative reform package that many criticized as watered down was the culmination of its duties.

In a 13-page statement to the Times, Cuomo's office dismissed the premise of the newspaper's investigation as "legally, ethically and practically false."

"Your fundamental assertion is that the Commission was independent. It wasn't," the office wrote. The statement also said that many of the companies for which Cuomo's staff had reportedly interfered did eventually receive subpoenas. That included Buying Time, according to the Times.

Jeremy Johnson's name appears 80 times in the charging documents against former Utah attorneys general Mark Shurtlef and John Swallow.

The pair of former officials were accused last week on multiple felony counts of bribery and obstruction of justice in what local media have described as the largest corruption case in Utah's history. Prosecutors allege that Johnson, a wealthy businessman who was trying to get the state to approve of online poker, was at the center of much of it.

Shurtleff and Swallow took advantage of Johnson's private jet, and Swallow and his family spent nights aboard Johnson's luxury houseboat, according to the indictments. In exchange, the former attorneys general allegedly helped Johnson propel his online poker ambitions as well as navigate a Federal Trade Commission probe into his business, I Works. Swallow allegedly offered, with the help of another associate, to connect Johnson with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to address the federal inquiry. (Reid's office has dismissed any connections to the case, saying the senator has not even been questioned by authorities.)

Now, as Johnson simultaneously faces that FTC investigation and a related federal criminal case alleging more than 80 counts of conspiracy and fraud, he has reportedly turned over evidence on Shurtleff and Swallow to local prosecutors in the probe that resulted in last week's charges.